The present invention, as follows from the title of this detailed description, relates to a method of stuffing with anchovies, that is to say, a method of stuffing the hole of a pitted olive with an anchovy, said method also being applicable for stuffing an olive with dough of boiled tuna-fish, with pepper or with other type of stuffing.
As it is well known, the process of pitting olives so that they may then be stuffed with anchovies constitutes a normal practice for such products from time immemorial.
Furthermore, as it is obvious, independently of the process of pitting olives, a certain treatment is imperative, particularly when anchovies are employed as stuffing matter, in order that such stuffing may be used with full guarantee that optimum organoleptic characteristics and microbiological stability of the finished product will be obtained.
The usual and most commonly employed process of handling anchovies, prior to their introduction inside the olives, incorporates a first stage in which anchovies are washed with water so that they may be desalted, a second stage in which the anchovies are filleted, that is to say, their fishbones and tails are removed, this operation being performed manually, and a third stage in which the soft portions of the anchovy are placed inside cylindrical cartridges where, thanks to the cooperation of a pneumatic or a hydraulic plunger, the extrusion of the product occurs, which product adopts the form of a dough.
This dough is supplied to a pitting and stuffing machine in which, thanks to a number of different mechanical means, pits of olives are being removed, the dough is then placed inside the olives and, finally, the inlet leading to the empty interior of the olive will be closed by the very piece of olive which was cut earlier on in the pitting stage.
Last of all, the stuffed olives are placed inside suitable containers, usually tins or cans, which also contain brine incorporating a certain type of preservatives designed to preserve the goods up to the very moment of their consumption.
There are many and important problems derived from the conventional methods of stuffing with anchovies.
In the first place, the fact that the filletting stage is achieved manually involves high costs, mainly due to the aforesaid labour force, and this circumstance further determines a tendency to speed up this manual process in order to reduce such a cost, in a manner such that the removal of fishbones and tails is carried out in a fast and careless manner, this being detrimental to the quality of the product. Now then, if we attempt to eliminate this operating stage with a view to avoiding the high costs involved, the loss in the quality of the product is so marked that it will surely be substantially less popular in the market.
A second but equally important problem derived from such conventional methods relates to the stage of preparation of the stuffing matter, namely, dough of anchovy.
In this sense, we have ascertained that the pressure needed for an anchovy to be transformed into a dough, combined with the tension between layers related to the extrusion, alter the fibrous structure of the muscle of the fish, thus causing the release of fats contained therein and facilitating its disgregation in the consecutive stages of the process, especially at that point in time when the already stuffed olive is submerged in the macerating fluid, that is to say, the fluid or liquid which jointly with the olives occupy the available capacity of the can or tin, causing the fluid to get muddy and, in some cases, causing the olives to be emptied out.
Obviously, all of this results in a poor and hardly pleasant presentation, as well as a remarkable misuse of the product, at the time of its consumption.
In this sense, it is also worth mentioning that the aforesaid disgregation problem may even get worse, to the point of disgregating very rapidly and almost totally, if a pasteurization stage, i.e. thermical treatment commonly employed in several industries, was applied as a means of sanitization and stabilization for the product.
The above problems bring about derivative problems, given that the impossibility to apply thermical treatments for the stabilization of the product forces manufacturers to employ specific preservatives of doubtful efficacy, such as the benzolic acid, or preservatives prohibited by the majority of the Food Legislations, such as the salicylic acid. This last stabilization process may well hide a bad manufacturing practice and/or be directly hazardous to public health, especially to the health of people suffering from renal disease.